


Grave

by findtheword



Series: Buffynatural [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1503344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findtheword/pseuds/findtheword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Buffy recently resurrected and the Winchester boys helping out around the Hellmouth, Buffy can barely feel a thing. Even a visit to her own grave fails to bring clarity, though perhaps a certain gruff Winchester can help shake a few of the cobwebs out of her head - not to mention her heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grave

She would never tell them that she came here and did this - not ever, not Willow nor, God, even Spike (not that she ever really knew why she told him anything at all) - but it had become a ritual. Buffy Summers stood keeping vigil above her grave. Even in the dim light of the twilight hours, it was obvious that the ground she tore up getting out of there mere months ago had grown over with grass and a few stray weeds. Some days she got there to find half-dead flowers on there, no doubt left by some well-meaning stranger - a bleeding heart that couldn’t leave the grave of such a young person go by unadorned. Mostly all Buffy could do then was stare, perplexed by the nature of the custom to cut and kill flowers to leave on ground that would easily grow them if it was just given half the chance. Even resurrected, death was still her gift.

Just then she stood with her arms wrapped around her torso, trying to retain some heat on the unseasonably cold night. Her green eyes were fixed on a crack that had started to form in the base of the stone and mostly she was just trying not to think of anything. But even despite her effort to block out the world, she was immediately aware of the presence over her left shoulder. She didn’t especially sense danger, although her reactions to that had been somewhat slow, almost inviting, recently. 

“Oh hey Buffy,” came a gruff voice from behind her. “I was trying to find you - well, me and Sam.” He left the reason for that hanging as he stepped forward, while Buffy took a few moments to compose herself and drag herself back as far as she could into the land of the living. 

“Oh,” he said at the moment she turned to face him. She watched him shift uncomfortably - and this was why (well, partly why) she would never tell them. 

“Don’t tell them,” she told him before he had a chance to add anything else. Pulling her lip into the grasp of her teeth, she turned back to the grave, gesturing at it with a half shrug. “It’s weird having your own grave, right? I just … I don’t know why I do it … it’s like I keep having to make sure it’s still here. That I’m …” She shook her head. Too much. 

Ever since she had ‘got back’ to Sunnydale, and found out that the Winchester brothers had stepped in to help her friends keep the Hellmouth from overrunning the place, she’d had a bit of a problem with being so guarded with the older brother as she was with everyone else. Spike she knew at least that it was something destructive - like a drug or a punishment. Dean, though - he’d been through death and returned. It was different, sure, but it was a bond she couldn’t share with anyone else. 

“I wouldn’t know,” he responded, his voice even deeper, gruffer - Buffy had noticed it did that when he didn’t feel comfortable. Apparently she made him feel uncomfortable a lot. “Wasn’t an awful lot to mine even before it was totalled when I was yanked back out the pit.” He let a few beats hang and looked at the stone. “Look, Buff - I’m no good at these chick flick-” 

She cut him off with a harsh laugh and turned challenging green eyes to his own. “How many chick flicks do _you_ know that involve death, resurrection, vampires, blood, gore, demons, more death all wrapped up in a neat little bow?” Just because she felt a connection to him didn’t mean she didn’t think he was an asshole sometimes. 

“Fair point …” he conceded, already having learnt not to take on this mythical slayer if he could help it. He held his hands up and raised his eyebrows at her. “I just was going to say - I saw my own share of hell’s pretty pleasures and it’s no cake walk. It took a frickin’ age for me to be able to close my eyes and be sure my skin would still be good and attached when I opened them again - time and more whisky than your pet vamp could stand.” The man was itching to behead that son of a bitch. 

Slowly, Buffy turned to him with a serious expression, which just spared him on. Their problems were the opposite but the same - both involved being unable to deal with the real world after where they had been, and what they’d experienced. Not that he knew that, of course. Everyone assumed she’d been tortured in hell for the past year, and she was happy enough to let them go on thinking that. She figured if they knew the truth, Willow and those that helped bring her back would feel terrible - and she just about understood they were trying to help her - and the rest would try to make her snap out of it. Sometimes she did wonder whether she was just pitying herself, but she’d be damned if she could figure out a way to work her way out of the mire. 

She glanced at him quickly as she felt her fingers close round his rough ones, and frowned for a moment. She didn’t remember telling herself to do that. It didn’t feel real - nothing did. Not even when his fingers wriggled themselves to entwine themselves with hers. 

“We just need to find a way to carry on,” she finished for him. She nodded and licked her lips, then changed tack completely. She hadn’t been back for long and if he was the only person in this world she could relate to, she didn’t want to completely freak him out. “Okay. Good. We should go - they’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.” 

Dean nodded and allowed his hand to drop to his side when she let go, letting the implications of this little talk wash to some place in the back of his brain which he mostly kept sodden with alcohol. It looked like being pulled out by freaky ass voodoo or whatever was not easier than being ‘raised from perdition’ by an angel of the lord. Worse, maybe. He still had his suspicious eye on the redhead but Sam was barring all action on that front so far … but he’d see. 

“Wait, you said you were looking for me?” Buffy asked as they stepped off, trying to inject some perkiness to her voice, even if it was a bit forced. 

“You know what,” he replied, after a moment’s silence. He smacked himself lightly on his head and grinned the patented Dean Winchester charm-offensive smile. “Can’t even remember. Let’s go - I’m starving.” 

“Pie?” 

Dean’s smile turned more genuine - almost lustful - at the thought of home-made, delicious, sweet pie, and he quickened his pace. “Not much that can’t be made better with pie.” 

How could he tell her they were supposed to be leaving now? She was clearly not at top slayer mojo or whatever and it wasn’t like there weren’t jobs to do around the Hellmouth. Sure, he could fob Sam off with that - Bobby maybe not so much, but that cranky ass was states away - and at least make sure that the slayer made it through the next few weeks. And that that witch didn’t step another foot out of line.


End file.
